In the last few years, efficient resource management turned out to be one of the major challenges for hardware designers. Strategies of reusability through reconfiguration have demonstrated interesting potentials to address it, providing also power and area minimization. The Multi-Dataflow Composer (MDC) tool has been presented to the scientific community to automatically build-up runtime coarse-grained reconfigurable platforms. Originally conceived in the field of Reconfigurable Video Coding (RVC), the MDC allows achieving attractive results also for hardware designers operating in different application fields. In this work, we intend to demonstrate the potential orthogonality of the MDC approach with respect to the RVC domain. A runtime reconfigurable wavelet denoiser, targeted for biomedical applications, has been developed and prototyped onto an FPGA Development Board Spartan 3E 1600. Impressive results in terms of resource minimization have been achieved with respect to more traditional solutions.

1. A Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable
Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the
Multi-Dataflow Composer ToolMulti-Dataflow Composer Tool
N. Carta, C. Sau, F. Palumbo, D. Pani and L. Raffo
DIEE - Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
University of Cagliari, Italy
October 8October 8--10, 201310, 2013
Cagliari, ItalyCagliari, Italy
Conference on Design and Architectures for Signal and Image ProcessingConference on Design and Architectures for Signal and Image Processing

2. Introduction
Some application-specific fields, such as the biomedical one, push
towards area- and power- effective VLSI implementation of digital
signal processing algorithms mainly for the development of
wearable or implantable devices.
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
To this aim, the Multi-Dataflow Composer (MDC) tool, originally
conceived for image/video processing, can be exploited in other
domains leading to optimal hardware implementations.
The MDC-based hardware platforms are flexible, fitting to
parametric solutions adjustable at runtime, according to the
characteristics of the signal of interest.

3. Research goals
Exploit strategies of resources reusability through
reconfiguration to provide area and power minimization.
Demonstrate the potential orthogonality of the MDC approach
with respect to the Reconfigurable Video Domain (RVC)
domain.
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
Test the proposed approach on a runtime reconfigurable
Wavelet Denoiser, targeted for biomedical applications,
prototyped onto an FPGA Development Board.
Evaluate benefits in terms of area and power in comparison to
traditional solutions and verify the system functionality using
simulated datasets of neural signals.

4. AA BB CCA B C
AA BB CCA B C
AA BB CCA B C
Multi-Kernel Datapath Generation
A B C
A
E C
D
Single
Application
Dataflows
SADs
Network Language (NL)
Descriptions
SAD 2SAD 1
HDL Components library, the
Functional Units (FUs) implementing
the actors:
• IEEE 754-1985 compliant
arithmetic modules;
• control flow modules.
All the FUs obey to the same FIFO-
based communication protocol.
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
Platform
Composer
Multi-Dataflow
CAL Composer
(MDCC)
A
D
CSbox
Sbox
B
E
Directed
Flow Graph
(DFG)
MDC FRONT-END
MDC
BACK-END
a Coarse-Grained
Reconfigurable
Hardware Platform
with the minimum
number of FUs
Global Kernel
Multi-Dataflow
Composer (MDC) tool

5. Use Case: Wavelet Denoising (WD)
WD aims at removing the background noise corrupting the signal
of interest, especially when it can be modeled as a Gaussian-
distributed random noise.
Translation Invariant solution: à-trous algorithm implementation.
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
The number of Decomposition/Recomposition levels depends on
the chosen input frequency and on the spectral characteristics of
both noise and signal of interest.

6. Use Case: Wavelet Denoising (WD)
WD aims at removing the background noise corrupting the signal
of interest, especially when it can be modeled as a Gaussian-
distributed random noise.
Translation Invariant solution: à-trous algorithm implementation.
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
A pair of quadrature
mirror Finite Impulse
Response (FIR) filters at
each level

7. Use Case: Wavelet Denoising (WD)
WD aims at removing the background noise corrupting the signal
of interest, especially when it can be modeled as a Gaussian-
distributed random noise.
Translation Invariant solution: à-trous algorithm implementation.
Approximation Signal
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
Approximation Signal
Detail Signal

8. Use Case: Wavelet Denoising (WD)
WD aims at removing the background noise corrupting the signal
of interest, especially when it can be modeled as a Gaussian-
distributed random noise.
Translation Invariant solution: à-trous algorithm implementation.
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
Registers to balance the
delay of each path of
the trellis

9. Use Case: Wavelet Denoising (WD)
WD aims at removing the background noise corrupting the signal
of interest, especially when it can be modeled as a Gaussian-
distributed random noise.
Translation Invariant solution: à-trous algorithm implementation.
Band-Pass solution
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool

10. WD: thresholding phase
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A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
To minimize the hardware resources, an hard thresholding has been
implemented: only samples with values greater than θ are passed whereas
the others are cleared to zero.
θ can coincide with a scaled version of the standard deviation σn of the
additive noise source, computed iteratively analysing consecutive
windows of b_len detail samples.


4
1
2,2
1_*4
1
9.3
n
n jj s
lenb
SCth   

lenb
k
j
n
kds j
_
0
2
2,

11. Computing Kernels
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
Considering an input sampling frequency of 12kHz, 4 levels of
decomposition/recomposition and removing the approximation
signal at the 4th level, the denoised signal has a bandwidth
between 375Hz and 6kHz.
Different computational kernels can be identified for the MDC
tool. They should present commonalities at the actor level,
enabling reuse of common hardware FUs.

12. Computing Kernels
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
dec kernel

13. Computing Kernels
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
rec kernel

14. Computing Kernels
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
thr kernel

15. To evaluate the MDC-based wavelet denoiser functionality, a
processor-coprocessor system has been designed and
implemented on a Xilinx FPGA Spartan-3E 1600 Development
Board.
Test Environment
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool

16. For every new input buffer frame of b_len samples:
Use-Case Execution Trace
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool

17. For every new input buffer frame of b_len samples:
Use-Case Execution Trace
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool

18. For every new input buffer frame of b_len samples:
Use-Case Execution Trace
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool

19. Coprocessor Parameter Set
The implemented coprocessor is highly parametric. The designer can
choose at runtime:
the number N of levels used in decomposition/recomposition;
the number and the values of the coefficients used for the FIR
filters;
the possibility of removing the last approximation signal to
obtain a band-pass filtering;
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
obtain a band-pass filtering;
the threshold values for the details at each decomposition level;
the b_len number of samples for each input frame (allowable
maximum: 512).
The input signal can be applied in input to the testing environment
through an UDP communication via Ethernet between the FPGA and
the host PC.

20. Experimental results: Test Data
The performance of the reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser has been
assessed using public available datasets of simulated neural signals,
constructed starting from a database of real physiological spikes.
The background noise overlapped to the significant signal is obtained
considering spikes of different neuronal cells at random times and
amplitudes.
Sampling Frequency: 12kHz Useful Bandwidth: 300Hz – 3kHz
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3
-1.5
-1
-0.5
0
0.5
1
1.5
Time [sec]
Amplitude[V]
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3
-1.5
-1
-0.5
0
0.5
1
1.5
Time [sec]
Amplitude[V]
Background noise: 0.1 Background noise: 0.3

21. Parameters set-up
Wavelet Denoiser parameters defined at runtime:
N = 4 of decomposition/recomposition levels;
the removal of the approximation signal at the 4th
decomposition level determining an output frequency
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
decomposition level determining an output frequency
bandwidth in the range of [375Hz-3kHz].
b_len = 500 samples as length of each input buffer frame;
the Haar/ Daubechies 2 families as mother wavelets.

22. 0.16 0.18 0.2 0.22 0.24 0.26 0.28
-1
-0.5
0
0.5
1
DenoisingInput[V]
Accuracy: low level noise and
Haar as mother wavelet
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
0.16 0.18 0.2 0.22 0.24 0.26 0.28
Time [sec]
0.16 0.18 0.2 0.22 0.24 0.26 0.28
-1
-0.5
0
0.5
1
Time [sec]
DenoisingOutput[V]

23. Accuracy: high level noise and
Haar as mother wavelet
0.16 0.18 0.2 0.22 0.24 0.26 0.28
-1
-0.5
0
0.5
1
DenoisingInput[V]
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
0.16 0.18 0.2 0.22 0.24 0.26 0.28
Time [sec]
0.16 0.18 0.2 0.22 0.24 0.26 0.28
-0.5
0
0.5
1
Time [sec]
DenoisingOutput[V]

24. Accuracy: low level noise and
Daubechies 2 as mother wavelet
0.16 0.18 0.2 0.22 0.24 0.26 0.28
-1
-0.5
0
0.5
1
DenoisingInput[V]
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
0.16 0.18 0.2 0.22 0.24 0.26 0.28
Time [sec]
0.16 0.18 0.2 0.22 0.24 0.26 0.28
-2
-1
0
1
Time [sec]
DenoisingOutput[V]

25. Area occupancy and Power Consumption
The datapath of the reconfigurable filter has been synthesized in
order to evaluate the effectiveness of our approach in terms of area
and power saving.
We compared the Global Kernel assembled by the MDC tool with:
the datapath obtained by the 3 identified kernels without any
resource sharing among them (Static Global Kernel);
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
resource sharing among them (Static Global Kernel);
the Cascaded Kernel implementing the wavelet denoising as a
fully-parallel solution without sharing actors among the
various decomposition/recomposition levels.
Results for the Cascaded Kernel only represent an estimation taking
into account the number of required FIR filters and the hardware
resources correspondent to the various modules of the HDL
components library.

26. Synthesis Results for Multiplier and Adder FUs
“Multiplier” and “Adder” FUs determine the largest contribution in
terms of area and power consumption.
Implementation adders multipliers
MDC Global Kernel 3 2
Static Global Kernel 6 4
Cascaded WD 20 32
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
Cascaded WD 20 32
FPGA and ASIC (using Cadence RTL Compiler targeting a 90nm CMOS
library) synthesis results for the relevant FUs:
FU FPGA ASIC
Slices Flip Flops MULT18x18s Area
[µm2]
Power
[mW]
Frequency
[MHz]
adder 341 116 0 8644 1,679 555,56
multiplier 138 131 11 113497 2,031 357,14

27. FPGA synthesis using the Xilinx FPGA Spartan-3E 1600 as target:
FPGA synthesis results
Implementation Slices [%] Flip Flops [%] MULT18x18s [%]
MDC Global Kernel 14 5 22
Static Global Kernel 22 8 44
Cascaded WD 76 22 356
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
Cascaded WD 76 22 356
The MDC Global Kernel is able to achieve 36% of saving in terms
of slices compared to Static Global Kernel and 82% compared to
the Cascaded WD solution.
Considering the Xilinx multiplier primitives, the resource saving
percentage is 50% and 97% respectively.

28. - 40% 100
150
Power[mW]
ASIC synthesis results
600000
800000
Area[µm2]
- 86%
- 40%
- 90%
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
0
50
Power[mW]
0
200000
400000
Area[µm
MDC Global Kernel Static Global Kernel Cascaded WD

29. Results evaluation
Provided that:
in the MDC Global Kernel case, the same resources are
reused at each level;
in the Cascaded Kernel case, the number of required
resources is linearly proportional to the number of levels;
the more will be the depth of the denoiser the larger will be the
benefits of adopting the MDC-based approach.
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
benefits of adopting the MDC-based approach.
Strict temporal constraints would make impossible the minimization
of hardware resources within kernels. In those cases, a compromise
design choice must be done to balance resource saving and
processing capacity.
In other cases different kernel models, for example exploiting
pipelining solutions, would be beneficial.

30. Conclusions
In this paper, the implementation of a Wavelet Denoiser allows to
demonstrate that:
the applicability of the MDC tool on a completely different
application field compared to the original one it was
conceived for;
a non-static implementation of a denoiser is possible
leveraging a coarse-grained reconfigurable hardware
design platform.
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
leveraging a coarse-grained reconfigurable hardware
design platform.
System correctness and accuracy have been properly verified using a
processor-coprocessor test environment and simulated neural signals
as input data, varying the values assigned to the various parameters.
The MDC-based solution is capable of an on-line processing of the
incoming samples maximizing the resources reuse and determining
area and power minimization.

31. Acknowledgement
The research leading to these results has received funding from the
Region of Sardinia, Fundamental Research Programme, L.R. 7/2007
“Promotion of the scientific research and technological innovation in
Sardinia” under grant agreement CRP-18324 RPCT Project (Y. 2010) and
CRP-60544 ELoRA Project (Y. 2012). Carlo Sau gratefully acknowledges
Sardinia Regional Government for the financial support of his PhD
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
Sardinia Regional Government for the financial support of his PhD
scholarship (P.O.R. Sardegna F.S.E. Operational Programme of the
Autonomous Region of Sardinia, European Social Fund 2007-2013 - Axis
IV Human Resources, Objective l.3, Line of Activity l.3.1).

32. A Coarse-Grained Reconfigurable
Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the
Multi-Dataflow Composer ToolMulti-Dataflow Composer Tool
N. Carta, C. Sau, F. Palumbo, D. Pani and L. Raffo
DIEE - Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
University of Cagliari, Italy

33. Read full article
IEEE Xplore Digital Library
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6661532
RPCT Project Website:
http://sites.unica.it/rpct/references/
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
http://sites.unica.it/rpct/references/

34. Reference: BibTex
@INPROCEEDINGS{Carta_DASIP_2013,
author={N. Carta and C. Sau and F. Palumbo and D. Pani and L. Raffo},
booktitle={Design and Architectures for Signal and Image Processing
(DASIP), 2013 Conference on},
title={A coarse-grained reconfigurable wavelet denoiser exploiting the
Multi-Dataflow Composer tool},
year={2013},
Nicola CartaNicola Carta etet al.al.
A CoarseA Coarse--Grained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the MultiGrained Reconfigurable Wavelet Denoiser Exploiting the Multi--Dataflow Composer ToolDataflow Composer Tool
year={2013},
pages={141-148}, }